A Commercial Success

Alumni from the 1980s may remember the autumn 40 years ago when a production crew descended on campus to film a “music video” that was one part PSA and one part advertisement for Campbell’s soup. The four-day shoot became a two-minute spot that aired on MTV. It starred dozens of actors and dancers and a mulleted band called On the Edge, according to the October 25, 1985, edition of The Muhlenberg Weekly. 

The global ad agency BBDO produced the commercial, which was directed by Richard Romagnola, father of then-student Kim Romagnola ’89. The college’s Campbell’s-label-red doors and proximity to New York City and Philadelphia sold it as a prime shooting location. Haas College Center, the Seegers Union Event Space, and Memorial Hall are among the recognizable locations in the video, which features leotards, feathered hair, and an earnest pro-healthy-choices song called “Live It Right” that all feel straight out of a very special episode of your favorite 1980s sitcom. According to a Morning Call article from October 18, 1985, production required two eight-hour days, a 16-hour day, and a 12- hour day and “enough [electricity] to light an average house at night for a year and a half.” 

Chris Seivard ’86, a communications major who was one of five students who helped with the shoot, primarily ran video assist. He remembers being home for winter break that year and seeing the ad airing between real music videos on MTV. “Who would have thought MTV would be an afterthought now?” says Seivard, who launched a 30-plus-year career in film and television, including as a cameraman for MTV, through one of the connections he made on the “Live It Right” set. “I can only watch ‘Jersey Shore’ so many times.”